Not long for his job?

11/10/2011

Any rugby follower will have already dissected England's appalling World Cup performance into tiny little pieces by now, and will most likely have come to the same conclusion: that England went at the tournament the wrong way, that they played a drab, conservative style, and that the players came across as entirely unlikeable. Much like the football team, in fact.

But it's not only the fans who have come to this conclusion: even some of the players are mumbling about their side's tactics, and specifically criticised the way Martin Johnson sent them out to play. Chris Ashton, via his Daily Mail column, did just that in a national newspaper, saying that they didn't maximise the talent at their disposal, a criticism that will no doubt see more pressure lumped on Johnson's head. How much longer does he have in the job, do you think?

'We played this whole tournament in a different way from the way we played in the Six Nations and I don't really know why we did that,' he complained. 'The way we played at the start of the Six Nations is the best way for us to maximise the talent we have in the squad, without a doubt. But we didn't do that. We didn't use what we've got and I don't see any point in that at all.'